Resin compliance letters, matched to the part's sheet and drafted for your quality manager.

A customer's quality team or buyer wants paperwork on a part: an FDA food-contact statement, a flammability statement, a recycled-content line, sometimes only the word compliant. Your quality manager works out which sheet and resin the part runs in, finds the current letter from that supplier, checks what the letter actually covers, and writes back. One missing letter, or one that names an old grade, holds up the answer.

For the test, AI works through copies of requests you already answered and matches each one to the part's resin and your supplier's letter: the requirement as the customer wrote it, the grade and date on each document, and a list of what's missing. Your quality manager reviews it all and decides. No customer or supplier hears from us.

A part's letter runs through the sheet, not only the resin. A customer asks about a tray or a panel, and your file holds a resin maker's letter, a sheet supplier's letter and maybe one for the colorant, each describing something different. SPE's 2002 tutorial on regrind says the extruder and the former must agree on how much regrind goes back into the sheet and hold to it, and that rejected parts must never go into that stream. So the draft asks whether the letter speaks to your sheet as it arrives, with your own trim in it or without, and shows the grade and date on every document it used.

The right section of part 177 depends on the polymer and the use. 21 CFR 177.1640 covers polystyrene and rubber-modified polystyrene, and its paragraph (c) sets a residual styrene specification for each, tighter for polystyrene used with certain fatty foods. 21 CFR 177.1630 covers polyethylene phthalate, and its paragraph (h) addresses plastics that hold food during oven baking or cooking above 250°F, so a letter for a chilled tray says nothing about an ovenable one. 21 CFR 177.1315 covers a family of copolyesters made with cyclohexanedimethanol, a section a PETG sheet letter may cite; its non-oriented form excludes carbonated beverages and beer, sets hot-fill and storage conditions and rules out thermal treatment in the container. The draft records the section the supplier named beside the food and temperature your customer named. Whether the part complies stays with your quality manager.

Recycled content needs a process behind it and a claim that holds up. FDA's page on recycled plastics in food packaging says it reviews each proposed use case by case, gives informal advice and opinion letters tied to a specific recycling process, and keeps a database of favorable opinions. A submission covers the source, contamination safeguards, test results and intended conditions, such as temperature, food type, contact time and single or repeated use. Trade coverage calls these letters of no objection, and one PET sheet letter reported in 2018 named fruit, vegetables, shelled eggs and bakery products. The FTC's Green Guides, 16 CFR 260.13, say pre-consumer content needs substantiation that it would otherwise have entered the waste stream, and they call a recycled claim on scraps reused in the original process deceptive. Your own reground trim is exactly that question, and the draft never writes a recycled-content line itself.

A flame report answers for one thickness, one direction, one face. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 302, at 49 CFR 571.302, lists seat backs, all trim panels and compartment shelves among occupant compartment components. A test specimen takes the thickness of the material as used in the vehicle, cut to 13 mm from the surface nearest the occupant space if it runs thicker, is cut in the direction that gives the most adverse result, and is tested with that nearest surface facing down. A thermoformed wall has thinned by the time it reaches a vehicle, so a report run on flat sheet raises a question the report can't answer alone. The draft sets the thickness on each report beside the print's minimum finished wall, and a person decides what follows.

A bare request, and what your reviewer checks. Some requests are as short as the line on Montgomery County Public Schools' 2022 bid tabulation for disposable cafeteria trays: meets FDA requirements for food contact. That names no food, no temperature and no rule. The draft turns a line like that into questions before your quality manager writes a word, and it records the basis each supplier claimed, including a threshold of regulation exemption where FDA's guidance lists one as a route. The owner names your reviewer, usually the quality manager who signs today, who holds each draft against the letter that went out: the right supplier, the grade and date on each document, the requirement as stated, and every gap. These are summaries of public documents and nothing here is legal or regulatory advice.

After a yes, for roughly 30 days, each incoming request gets a matched draft and a list of what's missing.

Your quality manager reads every line, chases the gaps and signs. The AI signs nothing and never writes to a customer or a supplier, and the same table keeps scoring the month.